inserting date-stamp in RTF formatted docs

[SottoVoce]

Hi, I am attempting to insert a date-stamp into a text document and save the document as rich text (rtf) rather than odt. But after saving and re-opening, the date-stamp no longer appears.

Is there a way to insert the date-stamp as plain text so that it can be retained if you save the document as RTF?

[Villeroy]

rtf makes no sense nowadays and OpenOffice supports rtf poorly. Simply use odt and even MS Word will handle it.

[Bill]

AutoHotKey in Windows and AutoKey in Linux can be used to insert the current date. Try a Google search for an equivalent program for Mac.

[Bill]

In Writer, after inserting the date field, you can select and copy the date field, then, leaving the field selected, use Edit > Paste Special > Unformatted text to replace the field with plain text.

[John_Ha]

It seems that AOO does not support date fields in .rtf format.

You have presumably ignored, or more likely turned off, the warning which AOO gives you saying that you may lose data when you save as a .rtf file.

See [Tutorial] Differences between Writer and MS Word files for why you should always work in and save files as .odt and never save as .rtf. .rtf is a propriety Microsoft format. The tutorial includes

Be very careful with .rtf files - especially if you are using images

Note [in the image] how a .rtf file cannot store some of Writer's capability. To make matters worse, Writer has, for example, chosen not to write notes to an .rtf file even though the .rtf file does allow notes to be saved in it. This is an example of an application (Writer) having the capability (notes), but choosing not to provide it in a given format (.rtf). Writer will, of course, save notes in a .odt file so, save as a .odt file and then create a copy as a .rtf file. If anything gets lost in the .rtf file you can go back to the .odt file where it will be saved.

Furthermore, .rtf files store images in a very inefficient manner by saving two copies of each image, where one of those copies is uncompressed! A .rtf file can therefore be many times - 50x - larger than the equivalent .odt file!

Is there a way to insert the date-stamp as plain text so that it can be retained if you save the document as RTF?

If you want to ignore the advice above then manually type it.